If it hit the wall wouldn’t it leave a mark or scuff on the ball? Maybe they should have examined the ball for any useful evidence.
can we debate the kemp catch
- Thread starter garlan5
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When I saw the title of the thread I thought it would be, at best, a biased analysis. After watching that one video about a dozen times, It's now clear to me it wasn't a legitimate catch. MLB is now a game of .25 inches.
The "they" in this case was perfectly satisfied with the call as it was made and moved on. It's only us crazies left.
You said "you have" like I was the one that tweeted it. To be clear--we won, I don't really care. I'm simply providing what people are talking about.
This is my biggest forum pet peeve---just because we're discussing it, it doesn't mean we're "dwelling" on it.
It’s all about the sound. His glove hitting the wall certainly did not make it, and I doubt any ball that has a padded glove between it makes a clear smash either. Unless he has webbing and part of the ball kind of protruded from the back of his glove and hit the wall directly, that was not a catch.
The fun question is, had they called it not a catch on the field would they have reversed it on replay? From what I saw during the telecast I'm betting they would have reversed it and called it a catch. I'm firmly in the "not sure" camp now after believing 100% it was a catch.
I thought it was a catch, live, and watching the original replay. Now...
I think it's clear that the ball bounces down into the glove. After that, though...
Looking at Rodderick's two angles, I'm not sure the glove hits the wall at all, or does more than just graze it, just after the ball hits the wall.
I'm not sure the ball doesn't hit the wall and the glove's tip at the same time.
I'm not sure it doesn't hit the glove which hits the wall (although this seems least likely to my eyes/ears/brain).
If I had to guess or pick, I'd say the ball hit the wall then glove; no catch. EH's point about the sound is important. If it DID hit the glove, it wasn't the webbing (which as an "H" type has holes in it where the ball could be in the glove and still contact the wall). The close-up shows it at or just above the index finger. There's no way it cleanly hits the finger of the glove and makes that sound.
But I guess it's not conclusive. So, catch. Good thing we won.
I think it's clear that the ball bounces down into the glove. After that, though...
Looking at Rodderick's two angles, I'm not sure the glove hits the wall at all, or does more than just graze it, just after the ball hits the wall.
I'm not sure the ball doesn't hit the wall and the glove's tip at the same time.
I'm not sure it doesn't hit the glove which hits the wall (although this seems least likely to my eyes/ears/brain).
If I had to guess or pick, I'd say the ball hit the wall then glove; no catch. EH's point about the sound is important. If it DID hit the glove, it wasn't the webbing (which as an "H" type has holes in it where the ball could be in the glove and still contact the wall). The close-up shows it at or just above the index finger. There's no way it cleanly hits the finger of the glove and makes that sound.
But I guess it's not conclusive. So, catch. Good thing we won.
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I thought it hit the wall when it happened. It was the sound more than anything else. I chalked it up to my Red Sox colored glasses and moved on. And while I still have Red Sox colored glasses, after seeing the replays I'm back to thinking it hit the wall.
Thank god for Eovaldi, Pearce and JBj.
Thank god for Eovaldi, Pearce and JBj.
This interesting to think about. I said in the game thread I'm convinced it hit the wall but I had no expectations they'd overturn it nor am I upset that they didn't. If the call went the other way, though, given the tv replays, I'm with you, I bet it get's overturned from no catch to catch, and then I'd be furious.
I'd like to make a motion that this play be henceforth known as Schrodinger's Catch.
I wonder if there is another example on video somewhere of someone else catching a ball up against the panels in that wall. I'd like to hear the sound of that, and of a ball hitting directly off of the wall. I am not savvy enough to find that stuff on the inter tubes. But it would make for an interesting comparison. Mostly, I am glad this doesn't matter today because if we had lost, this thread would already be 10 pages long and friendships may well have been lost by this point.
OKay, I think it hit the wall first. Call stands though and handled well by MLB. I’m really glad it didn’t matter.
Putting aside my sarcasm for a minute, I too was initially convinced it wasn't a catch due to the sound. When it was ruled a catch and when I saw the initial (non-super-slow-mo) replays I rationalised the sound by the fact that the networks all enhance these type of sounds substantially. When pitchers are warming up in the bullpen the pop of the ball into the catchers' mitts sound like cannon shots. The Houston wall doesn't seem as as solid as the Monster but every time a ball is hit off it it clangs as loud as at Fenway, etc. I figured it was just enhanced audio that TBS added for the excitement value.
So whilst I do agree that super slo-mo seems to support the no-catch theory (and I think it's about 70-30 conclusive - or 68-28-4 with the 2nd ball theory) I think the audio enhancements could easily make a glove - ball - wall collision sound like pretty much anything and so don't offer 'conclusive proof' in and of itself.
So whilst I do agree that super slo-mo seems to support the no-catch theory (and I think it's about 70-30 conclusive - or 68-28-4 with the 2nd ball theory) I think the audio enhancements could easily make a glove - ball - wall collision sound like pretty much anything and so don't offer 'conclusive proof' in and of itself.
The moon does look bigger to me when it's on the horizon, but that's because I'm afraid of the moon.
I was in the camp of it being a catch, but it is clear to me now that the glove hits the bottom of the panel, tilting the top of the panel forward slightly so that it makes contact with the ball.
If the panel doesn't move, the ball would have fallen directly into the glove.
In a way, the WALL hit the BALL rather than vice versa.
If the panel doesn't move, the ball would have fallen directly into the glove.
In a way, the WALL hit the BALL rather than vice versa.
The last series that was this obviously-fun for a neutral observer is probably the 2016 WS. I mean, I stopped and marveled at the Astros like a half dozen times last night - this play, the Bregman play in foul territory, etc - before catching myself and remembering that I'm supposed to hate them this week.
As for this play, unless you give me an angle from the LF foul pole showing that it hit the wall first, my eyes are saying it went in the glove on the fly. The clang could have been leather hitting the metal, or it could have been Kemp himself hitting the metal (boots, belt, elbow, whatever). There is nothing I've seen on any video that would make me 10% as confident as Michael Holley sounds here in asserting that it hit the wall.
Audio should be part of the review. They should analyze acoustic impact sounds. Why not?
But... but... they took out the grassy knoll from CF years ago!
This conspiracy runs deep.
(I'm just amused that they're the one ballpark that could have been said to have a grassy knoll)
Right, I mean, best case - he's dwelling on us all dwelling on it. He's meta-dwelling.
But in a larger sense, what does he think the point of a message board about baseball is? "How do I work this here thing?!" The mind boggles.
Well, for one thing replays usually take far too long as it is. Even if you had one team devoted to finding the most compelling video angles and analyzing them and a separate one scrutinizing the audio plus a person ready to sprint out and retrieve the ball for forensic analysis, but how long would you think it would take to coordinate these teams and weigh the resulting evidence to reach a conclusion? 15 minutes? 20?
Because reliably distinguishing the kinds of sounds various materials make when striking various other materials at various velocities and angles as filtered through audio transducers and processors of varying quality is not a simple matter, and I'm pretty sure it's not something umpires are trained to do. Are you asking MLB to employ a trained forensic audio specialist and keep her in NYC for the handful of calls that would hinge on her expertise in a given year?
I mean, there's a limit.
That would all be true if you needed separate teams to retrieve and synchronize audio and video, which you don’t. And if I had proposed doing forensics on the ball, which I hadn’t.
There would be times when audio was useless, and so be it.
But how are the videos we use acquired? A guy with a camera following the play. If only cameras could be equipped with some sort of audio recording device. Maybe one with a geometry designed to record sounds from far away. Like a catenary macrophone machine. Or a ‘parabolic mic’, to coin a phrase. I mean, it would be super hard to get a microphone onto a camera and actually have it point at the same place that the camera does, but I bet it could be done with the right teams in place.
Indeed there’s a limit.
i suppose it would be a technological feat to display audio information in a visual medium that a lay person can interpret, but maybe it’s possible.
How hard do you think it is to identify, for example, a ball hitting a glove or a wall... you know, the thing we all do hundreds of times every time we watch a game?
Look, I’m not even saying it would have helped in this situation. Maybe it wouldn’t be so useful, but I’m not sure that ‘the technology is beyond us’ and ‘the interpretation is beyond us’ are the right answers.
So if someone proposed video replay, would people post scenes from CSI when they just say ‘enhance’ and suddenly an image is clear?
Because it’s an analogous situation.
I'm looking for the point of this post.
Wait one minute....
Still nothing there guys, sorry.
But in this case it's not a ball hitting a glove vs. a ball hitting a wall. It's a ball hitting a wall vs. a glove with a ball inside it hitting a wall (nobody's denying that something hit the wall; the question is what). The surface materials of the ball and the glove are not that different, so you're down to differences in hardness/elasticity and in the surface area that the impact is diffused over, as well as some difference in momentum due to the ball's impact being absorbed by the glove. I don't doubt these will show up as differences in the impact sound, but once you count in response non-linearities in the ambient microphones, reverberation, background noise, and most of all processing for broadcast (limiting can play weird tricks on the spectral content of audio signals, especially sharp transients like impact noises), you reach a point where the difference may not be obvious (or may be deceptively obvious -- i.e., you could get something that sounds subjectively like ball-on-wall but is actually ball-in-glove-on-wall). Or maybe it is obvious, and this is an easy call for a trained person. But you'd need a trained person to know that.
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Enhance!I'm looking for the point of this post.
Wait one minute....
Still nothing there guys, sorry.
It’s a pretty simple point.
The rest of it was just silly sarcasm.
Well, some sounds would be distinct and some wouldn’t. But I’m not talking about having the ump identify the acoustic pattern of the sound. I’m talking about the sync between video and audio. If there’s an audio spike at a time when the ball is visibly not in the glove, that would be perhaps as meaningful as ‘a ball hitting a wall makes that particular sound’.
I admit that it wouldn’t be an amazing breakthrough that revolutionized the game. Again: maybe it would have so few applications that it’s not worth it.
I was just saying above that ‘too hard!’ is maybe not the real reason not to do it.
I thought they said on the telecast that it was a "crew chief review", not a challenge by Houston. If Hinch asked for a challenge when West was already going to have it reviewed, it'd be silly to count it against the Astros.
Crew chief reviews are permitted in three circumstances: (1) potential home runs, (2) after the 7th inning, or (3) any time if one team's tv system craps out.
When a call is eligible for crew chief review -- that is the 8th inning or later or a potential home run -- the crew chief always has authority to call for a crew chief review on his own. If the call is eligible for crew chief review, the manager can ask for a crew chief review but it doesn't have to be granted. The manager can ask for a crew chief review on a potential home run even if the manager has a challenge left. If the crew chief refuses the manager can use the challenge. For other crew chief reviews the manager can ask for a review only if the manager is out of challenges.
When a call is eligible for crew chief review -- that is the 8th inning or later or a potential home run -- the crew chief always has authority to call for a crew chief review on his own. If the call is eligible for crew chief review, the manager can ask for a crew chief review but it doesn't have to be granted. The manager can ask for a crew chief review on a potential home run even if the manager has a challenge left. If the crew chief refuses the manager can use the challenge. For other crew chief reviews the manager can ask for a review only if the manager is out of challenges.